


Best Laid Plans

by Duck_Life



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Gen, Happy Ending, Self-Harm, Stanley Uris Does Not Take A Bath, Stanley Uris Has OCD - Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 16:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12892326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Stan Uris gets a phone call, and everything changes.





	Best Laid Plans

I.

Stan’s a man with a Plan, and it’s a plan he’s had since he was 16,  _ the _ Plan, and he’s kept it in his back pocket for when the world got to be too much, too loud, too dirty, for when he couldn’t take a breath without feeling the grit of the earth swirling through his lungs, for when he dug his fingers into the sides of his arms until he left marks and felt nothing but the dirt and gunk jammed under his nails. 

The Plan changed a little over the years, morphing to fit new trends. Sleeping pills were all the rage for a few years, and during a single night in college he thought about hanging himself. Right now, as a 38-year-old with a nice job and a nice house and a nice wife, Stan’s Plan is a box of Gillette super thin stainless steel double edge razors. Razors, and a bath. 

If someone were to sit him down and ask him why he wanted to take his own life, he’s not sure he’d have an answer. Maybe that’s why he’s never thought about therapy. He just doesn’t know what he’d say. He’s just tired. He just needs a break. And if he can’t take a break, he’ll take the out. 

He’ll take a bath.

Stan wends through the narrow aisles of the CVS, scanning the shelves until he spies shaving cream and toothpaste. He walks past bags of cotton balls and boxes of Q-tips until he finds the razors. 

One box of Gillette super thin stainless steel double edge razors. 

He tucks the box under his arm and moves toward the front of the store, his mind on warm bathwater and his wife Patty and the baby he’s never going to have.

Maybe that’s it, the driving force. Yes, he’s had the Plan since high school, but it was always just a plan. He’s putting it into action now, after five years of waiting, because he can’t stay like this anymore, fuck, he can’t let  _ Patty _ stay like this anymore. It’s not just the thing about the kids, but that’s the most obvious symptom of  _ it _ , whatever  _ it _ is, this itchy empty feeling that’s gnawed at him for almost his whole life. 

Stan likes his things in order, and that’s never been a secret, but until very recently he didn’t know how far that extended. He likes his life in order, the house just so and the job just so and yes, in his vision, there’s a chubby little toddler running around weaving between his legs. 

But there’s not, not in reality. His plans fell through, so he needs the Plan. 

He’s almost to the counter when his phone buzzes, and he answers it reflexively without looking at the number. “Stan Uris,” he says flatly, the box of razor blades balanced under his elbow.

“Stanley, hey,” the man on the other end says, his voice weirdly familiar. “It’s Mike. Mike Hanlon, from Derry.” Stan can’t explain it but his throat closes up in panic at the name of his hometown. “Time’s up.”

The box of Gillette super thin stainless steel double edged razors drops to the floor. 

“Stan?” Mike says through the phone, sounding concerned. “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” he says, throat dry.

“You’ll come, right?”

Because before Stan made the Plan, Stan made a promise, and Stan keeps his promises. “Yes,” he says. “Yeah, of course, Mike. I’ll be there.” 

Stan walks out of the CVS having bought nothing, his mind on Derry, Maine. He gets home and packs a bag and books a flight, kisses his wife goodbye and calls a cab. He’s going to Derry to honor the promise he made 27 years ago.

The razors and the bath, they’ll still be there when he gets back.

II.

Heart thumping and pounding so hard he feels it in his ears, Stan scrambles backward out of the sewer, desperately surging toward the promise of daylight. He can feel the phantom snap of It’s horrible teeth over his face, the memory 27 years old now. 

He didn’t come so close death this time, but he came close enough to glimpse the deadlights (and the horrible, horrible teeth) and it’s like he can’t breath, it’s like everything around him is spinning. Distantly, he can hear his friends ( _ “You’re not my friends.” _ ) splashing toward him, Ben and Bill and Bev and Richie and Eddie and Mike, all of them older and wiser now and he’s still the way he was, still scared and neurotic ( _ “You left me.” _ ) and never will be anything else. 

Stan trips on the lip of the entrance to the sewer and goes sprawling. His wallet and phone slide out of his pocket and Eddie rescues them from the creek, and then as the group of them pour out of the sewers behind him Stan starts to shout.

“I don’t want this!” he says, lying in the muck and the mud and the brush from the Barrens. “I didn’t want this, I don’t want to be here, it’s disgusting and I’m scared and I don’t want to die in there,” he says. 

It didn’t look like the woman with the flute, not this time. It just looked like Itself, the red hair and the white face and the orange pom-pom buttons and the horrible, horrible teeth. It came for him and Stan realized with a sudden, dawning horror that he couldn’t really plan for anything, and in his endless quest for control of his own life, he thought he at least had the Plan. But It put even that into question. 

“I don’t want to die in there,” Stan repeats as his friends ( _ Are they friends? _ ) clump around him, Ben gently trying to help him sit up, Beverly taking his hand and watching him with sad eyes. Mike and Bill and Richie kneel and reach out to touch him, hands on his shoulders and arms and all of them with worried eyes, and it’s so much like before, after the woman with the flute clamped her ( _ Its _ ) jaw down over his face. “I want to die at home,” Stan says, sounding horribly childlike and out of control. “I want to die at home, I want to die at home.” At some point his babbling just becomes, “I want to die, I want to die, I want to die.”

Standing a little apart, clutching Stan’s cell phone, Eddie suddenly feels it buzz and he looks down: Patty’s calling. “Stan Uris’ phone, Eddie speaking,” he answers quietly. “I— yes. Oh! Oh.” Oblivious, Stan leans back into Mike and keeps roaring on about his best laid plans, about the Plan. “Oh, wow. Okay then. No, I’ll tell him. Right. Take care.” 

“I get up every single fucking day and it’s like everything is wrong and I’m the only one who can see it,” Stan goes on, scrubbed down to his core by his latest encounter with It. “And I look around and I have this amazing life, with Patty and the house and everything, and it’s still too fucking hard. I can’t do it anymore, I can’t, I tried, I can’t.” 

They all watch him, none of them knowing what to say. 

And then Eddie says, “Well, it’s about to get a lot harder.” He joins the rest of them in a warm cluster around Stanley. “What with the kid and all.”

Stan fixes his eyes on Eddie, sweaty hair sticking to his forehead. “What?” 

“That was Patty on the phone,” he says carefully. “She’s… Stan, you’re gonna be a dad.” 

III.

They kill It.

And as the thing that had tormented them lays eking out Its death rattle, it occurs to Stan that dying isn’t easy at all. It doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t change anything. 

That’s what he’s thinking about as he walks with his childhood friends out of the sewer and into the daylight. 

IV.

Stan arrives home with a bouquet of flowers for Patty. There’s a gash over his forehead, stitched up and bandaged at a hospital in Maine, but he’s fine overall. A few scrapes and bumps won’t kill him. 

“What happened to you?” Patty says, alarmed. “I thought you were at your high school reunion.”

“I was,” he assures her, because that’s just the easiest way to explain it. Someday he’ll tell her everything— well, all the parts that he can remember. “This—” he gestures to the bandage— “is nothing, I just fell. And… and Patty, I can’t believe it…” He sweeps her into a hug and kisses her and then kisses her again. “I didn’t think I could ever be this happy. I just can’t believe it.”

“Well, believe it, mister,” Patty says, one hand over her abdomen. “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Yeah,” Stan says. “Me too.” 

V.

Stanley doesn’t go back to the CVS for the box of Gillette super thin stainless steel double edge razors. And he doesn’t take that bath. 


End file.
